It's funny how people these days expect media to be 100% original and free of any inspiration/concepts that can be derived from other forms of media. Good luck finding a healthy supply of entertainment that meets that criteria.

It's funny how people these days expect media to be 100% original and free of any inspiration/concepts that can be derived from other forms of media. Good luck finding a healthy supply of entertainment that meets that criteria.

Calling something a cliche is basically just saying something is very unoriginal. People generally do not like cliches because they fail to surprise the audience, that's why hollywood today is generally very uninteresting to many people, they mistake good structure for good storytelling. I stopped watching most superhero movies after Iron Man 1 cause it was the same thing over and over again, it failed to entice me.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a trope being 'overused', and originality is harder than ever these days, but such things make your story predictable, and to many that can be off-putting and take the excitement out of the story. That's partly why Game of Thrones was such a successful start, because of its whole "anyone can die" everyone who hadn't read the books were always tense because they had no idea who was going to die, and those who read the books were already excited to see things in the book play out in the movie. Granted, game of thrones went overboard and now a lot of people aren't willing to get attached to any characters because the constant death is exhausting. Surprise is also different from a twist, a twist doesn't make a story good or bad, or make it more surprising, a twist is just a twist, it's how you use it that matters. A surprise is what makes things exciting for the audience, when the audience is thrown off guard we're not sure what's going to happen, and that makes watching so much more interesting. I think there is merit to people not liking cliches, and for good reason, a cliche seems like a lack of effort to many, not to say it always is.

Of course, plenty of people go into a story to shut their brains off, in Shounen we know the MC is gonna live against Big Bad, we know that eventually someone's gonna stick it to Big Bad, and for many people they don't care, they just like to shut their minds off and watch near-mindless action and overpowered people blow things up. If that's what you enjoy then that's what you enjoy. In romance manga you usually know the two are going to end up together, but we just like to see the process happen, and its the little things involved in the process of each different story that makes things different.

However, you're not going to get critical acclaim if you're not interested in surprising your audience. But everyone has their reasons for writing, you don't have to write for any audience that you don't want to, and some would argue you should only write for yourself anyways.

I think there is a way to use cliches well and a way to use them badly. When they are used badly, they deserve to be bashed...

I guess so. Give me an example of a poorly used cliché.

A poor cliche is when something cliche is done without purpose. Why does the little sister character in x show romantically love her older brother? Because anime. You can't just paste in a cliche and think it will automatically work. You need to put in the effort. Take Toradora for instance. The "tsundere love interest" cliche is pretty darn common, but Toradora make sure its puts in the effort to develop Taiga and make her behavior believable. On the other hand Chivalry of a Failed Knight doesn't put in the effort to developing whatsherface and as a result, I hated the female romantic lead.

I think there is a way to use cliches well and a way to use them badly. When they are used badly, they deserve to be bashed...

I guess so. Give me an example of a poorly used cliché.

A poor cliche is when something cliche is done without purpose. Why does the little sister character in x show romantically love her older brother? Because anime. You can't just paste in a cliche and think it will automatically work. You need to put in the effort. Take Toradora for instance. The "tsundere love interest" cliche is pretty darn common, but Toradora make sure its puts in the effort to develop Taiga and make her behavior believable. On the other hand Chivalry of a Failed Knight doesn't put in the effort to developing whatsherface and as a result, I hated the female romantic lead.

Complete Originality doesn't exist anymore. Anyone who bashes on a show because of cliches is just a stuck-up idiot that has an agenda. Unless we're talking about bad cliche usage. A "good" cliche and a "bad" cliche are usually only different in the eyes of a viewer, however.

Calling something a cliche is basically just saying something is very unoriginal. People generally do not like cliches because they fail to surprise the audience, that's why hollywood today is generally very uninteresting to many people, they mistake good structure for good storytelling.

Cliche's generally mean a writer got his ideas not from experience or imagination, but from other books or movies, usually ones everybody else had already seen.
Since Q is clearly defending her author ambitions again, it's about the audience seeing the author/screenwriter as imaginative in the first place. If a writer used something that "looked cool" in another work, the audience is judging the writer not by his talent but by his taste compared to their own.

In addition to the article, Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary had a column on his review blog for years, and three books out of it, with favorites like
- The Climbing Killer: All hero/villain showdowns will take place on rooftops, especially if the building is still under construction.
- The Talking Killer: No villain immediately pulls the trigger without smugly Monologuing--Otherwise he couldn't be distracted or the hero's partner couldn't brain him from behind.
- The Movie Studio: Despite the growing use of location shooting, any shot of a movie backlot will have extras wandering about as nuns, showgirls and/or harem slaves. They're not actually shooting anything, they're just wandering about.
- The Grocery Bag: For confident young urban women who don't drop their bags of oranges while food-shopping about the city, any shopping tote-bag must necessarily contain one three-foot French baguette sticking out.
- The Cough of Death: 1) No cough in a movie is ever without serious consequences. 2) No one ever survives a hospital bed.
- Answering Machines: No one owns one anymore, yet they are still able to symbolize a breakup or deliver a warning by the villain.

One time, on one of our movie boards, we had a "Pick your most annoying movie cliche' by genre" thread--
My choice was:
80's feel-good comedy: "Your Honor, I'd like to address the jury, if I may..."

Cliche's generally mean a writer got his ideas not from experience or imagination, but from other books or movies, usually ones everybody else had already seen.

Sometimes, but referencing or otherwise taking from another work, popular or not, is not inherently cliche. Cliche always carries a negative connotation pertaining to over usage of whatever trope is in question, and therefore predictability and thus a lack of surprise, ending in disappointment.

it's about the audience seeing the author/screenwriter as imaginative in the first place. If a writer used something that "looked cool" in another work, the audience is judging the writer not by his talent but by his taste compared to their own.

To an extent, but that in itself isn't what makes for poor storytelling. Like I was saying, surprise is what engages any audience, it's the key to every moving story and every rich quip. Humor after all is just a matter of outwitting your audience in a way that is outrageous, and tragedy is pulling the rug under someone in a way that shatters them to their core. If you rely on cliches, you pull the audience out of the story and back into their seat, and you are unlikely to convincingly do either.

Everything is a cliché - or, rather, everything is a structure. We learn to converse by picking up on the meanings of the common phrases we hear. This is why, if you're actually aware enough to pay attention to what you say, you'll realize that almost nothing is original: you're speaking in phrases - and even meanings! - you learned from your exposure to society. (Notice that I put an exclamation point in the middle of a sentence. I think I was okay with this because I think i've seen hyphenated asides in the past that do this.)

Challenging these structures is incredibly difficult. This is why leftists talk so much about power structures - and why we can have so many leftists talking about power structures without actually knowing the philosophy behind them and consequently making the same mistakes they criticize. It'd be pretty funny if it weren't sad.

From this perspective, hating on clichés is kind of silly. But defending them is just as silly, because there's no reason we ought to follow the structures given us by those in power. Barthes said writing fiction is like flashing your ass at the political authorities; why would you want to be propagandizing for those authorities?

If you want a good perspective on fiction, I suggest you read Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton. That's where I learned a lot of this stuff. Eagleton is pretty Marxist, and so he also makes mistakes unawares, as I said, but you can't pin it on him because he says he isn't setting out to be objective in the first place.